It happened

I knew it was potentially coming. I felt it. The rent increase. Although the letter is worded so weirdly I can't figure out how much I'm supposed to pay in rent. Seriously, what kind of moron wrote it? It was also addressed to the wrong person. I now wonder if they have no idea who lives in my apartment. Now apparently I'm going to have to call my apartment manager to get this figured out.

We appreciate your residency at the apartments. While it is neither
pleasant nor easy to raise rents, we find it necessary to due to an increase in
operating expenses. Effective April 1st 2007 your unit rent will be $770
which is in line with the current market value. You will also be
responsible for your portion of $25 for the combined utilities charges.

XYZ management values you as a resident and we are committed to providing
the best residential facilities for the current market rental rate.
Effective April 1st 2007 your rent will be $775, your utilities will be $45 for
a total of $800. If you park on the premises you will need to add your
parking charges to $800 for your grand total.

Random about TV (apparently)

My dinner plans tonight got cancelled. Is it slightly wrong that I'm okay with that because it means I can sit at home and watch Beauty and the Geek and Top Chef? Probably. Although I already know who wins Top Chef and I'm not happy about it. I do kind of want to see how they get there and how it happens. You know?

In other TV news, I'm giving Veronica Mars one episode to prove me wrong before I stop watching. In the previews from last episode she gives the oh so typical "I'm pregnant" line to someone. I'm hoping, as Michelle suggested, it is for a case and not a clear Jump the Shark moment. My biggest TV peeve ever is the way teenagers on TV get pregnant at the drop of a hat. They can't just have sex. There ALWAYS has to be consequences and 99.99% of the time it is pregnancy. On Degrassi they had the consequences of oral sex be Gonorrhea. (And yes I do watch a Canadian TV show on The N. In fact, I should be ashamed to admit that the primary reason I keep digital cable is so that I can watch Degrassi on The N. I should be ashamed I know).

Totally Fun!

I took my first belly dancing class last night. All my worries were dumb. It was really fun. I was not surrounded by size 0 coeds. There were a wide variety of shapes and sizes. I wasn't even the oldest person there I don't think. I think I'll take it again next quarter. And I highly recommend it. I can feel the burn today. :)

Thanks to Michelle & KTP I started using Pantene Ice. I really like it! It makes my hair feel very soft.

Hmm... I had a 3rd thought but it has escaped my pretty little head. :)

Thirty-Six

That's my magic number. The problem... in order to donate blood I need a hct of 38. So despite the fact that I have stopped taking my Aleve. I have started taking a multi-vitamin and drinking a lot of orange juice (something about Vitamin C and Iron). I am still technically anemic. So I was yellow carded again. This is the 5th (or 6th) one. This is causing me a tiny bit of stress because I have to do another blood draw before I can get my next round of my regular pills and I'm worried she won't give them to me if I'm anemic.

Easily influenced

I've become Food Network's bitch. I'm not even on any sort of diet, but I just love Food Network on Sunday nights. I love Iron Chef America and I LOVE Food Network Challenge. Tonight's challenge is called Flying Knives. Basically it is 5 teppanyaki chefs showing off their flair. All I can think of while I watch this is how much I now want to go to Benihanna's.

Go go gadget... pooh too tired...

This weekend has been go go go for me.

Friday I hopped the bus to Bellevue where I met up with Big R and we shopped. SHOPPED. I walked into the Apple store and slapped down my debit card and walked out with Pica, an 80g black ipod. She's pretty and shiny and I get worried I'm going to break her. Or make her less shiny and pretty. I've got mad skillz in that realm you know. I also bought 3 new pairs of earrings and a new pair of old lady tennis shoes. Yay!

Saturday I just took Tess to the vet. I spent the afternoon relaxing which was nice.

Today I was up at the crack of dawn. I did laundry and was out of hte house by 8:30 to meet I for breakfast. She needed to interview someone in my age bracket for her adult psych class so... :) Apparently I'm in a normal place. That's good to know. I went to the grocery store and went home for lunch. After lunch, I went for a Sunday adventure! I went to Golden Gardens in the Ballard Area. As I got off the bus I discovered that the bus stop is at the top of a mother fucking cliff. I had to go down a ton of stairs to get to the park. I actually felt a tiny bit dizzy on the stairs at the top. So when I got down the stairs to the park I thought it will kill me to walk back up the stairs. My second thought was that I should've brought my kite because it was perfect kite flying weather. I walked around the park and the beach. I took a bunch of photos but I am not pulling them from my camera right now because I'm tired. So while walking on one of the paths I saw a sign that indicated the Ballard Locks were near. I knew I could catch a bus there. So I start walking. And walking. And walking. Forever later I end up at the locks and I was going to go into the parkbut I was too tired. I will say that I walked 13,361 steps which is equal to 788 calories burned and 3 and 1/3 miles. I rock!

Laguna Beach & The Hills

KTP, you may be the best person to answer this question since you watch far more MTV than a normal person our age should... although I'm right there with ya. :) So what I don't understand is what are these two shows. Are they reality? Are they fiction? Are they a fictionalized faux reality kind of like how The Office is a "documentary"? Those aren't real people living life are they? I ask this because I watched 4 minutes of an episode where a blonde implied to a guy with the freakishly whitest teeth I've ever seen that she was pregnant. She wasn't but she wanted him to feel bad because she had felt bad for those days she thought she was. It totally seemed like something Brenda Hampton would write. They also had NO chemistry as a couple. I don't get it...

How does this work?

So I was just reading online about a house going on the market for $155 million. Further down the article it talked about Trump's home that he's asking $125 million. So I went to a mortgage calculator and the monthly payment on a simple mortgage for that much is $729,000. Who pays that as a mortgage? How can they?! Am I missing something. Well clearly nobody would mortgage that much... There's something about the world of super high finance that I'm totally missing. I can't imagine that someone has enough liquid assets to be able to outright purchase a house for $125 million. So how does that work??

I am such a 5 year old!

I received my tax refund this morning. I actually knew it was coming because I went online last night to check the status. My first thought while walking to work this morning... I want to go shopping TONIGHT. :) I'm getting an ipod and after thinking about it and discussing with Michelle I think I'm going whole hog fancy... 80 gig. This way I won't have to purchase another one for many years. (Pip I got either Christmas 2002 or my birthday 2003 so that's 4 years... That's a pretty good run I think.) I'm also ordering the newbie a case online so that there is some modicum of protection around it. I'm HARD on stuff... I know this. Luckily since I work for the college, I can get a discount from the Apple store... and since every place and their brother has the ipod for the exact same price the Apple store it is! And I'll be able to use it on my next Sunday Adventure! Yippeeeeee!!

Oh my hips don't lie...

Tonight I signed back up for the hydrofit class that got cancelled last time. It was a lot of fun and there are 4 people in the class so that means it will keep going. Yay!

Michelle & I discussed belly dancing today. I think I want to take a class on it. So isn't it lucky that my college is offering a belly dancing class. Yay! I signed up for it today and am looking forward to it. I have previously mentioned, I'm sure, my girl crush on Shakira. I want to make my hips do that. Or at least something like that. Plus belly dancers are all hippieish and all about "accept your body" blah blah blah.

After I get my tax refund I have a 3 fold plan for it. 1 - New pair of tennis shoes so I can go back to the gym. My current pair are not doing well after a year + of hard wearing. And they stink. Like REALLY stink. 2 - New iPod. I'm going to go with a video one. I thought I could get a good deal through the college at the apple store, but sadly the cost for the one I found on the apple site is the exact same cost I can get it from Amazon for. 3 - Sending it off to my good friend... mortal enemy the credit card company. 4 - Maybe another tattoo... ;) (Ok probably not another tattoo. Maybe... No, probably not... :) )

To Ipod or not to Ipod that is the question...

I'm getting a tax refund. The bulk of it is going to my friend American Express. I am saving out a bit of it for something fun for me and for a new pair of tennis shoes. (I know a wild life I lead).

I'm considering purchasing a new MP3 player... quite possibly an ipod. I've been against buying a new one for awhile. I don't believe in replacing something with a newer model just because it is the newest latest and greatest. If there were absolutely nothing wrong with Pip (my current mp3 player) I'd probably consider it and then move on, but Pip has developed an issue. The headphone jack is damaged and it only plays into one ear of the headphone. (I know this is usually a headphone issue, but I've tested the headphones and they both work on other products.) Pip will also ONLY play MP3s and the newer music downloads do into WMAs or some other type that I can't then translate into MP3 despite having the software to do it because they are protected. I do know I could go to all of mp3s dot com and even pay less but I am vaguely troubled by their questionable legality. If I'm actually paying for the damn track, I want to know that the track is fully legal and if I'm going to get busted for illegal music it won't be for something I actually paid money for. :) But my issue with the ipod is two fold... (And it can be attributed to the fact that i've only ever worked 1 ipod so I could just not know stuff.) I don't like the dial. Mine has buttons and I prefer that. It also seems like there's no way to just listen to a random selection of whatever music is on it. Like if you listen to the stuff in the folders you're stuck in whichever folder you're in. (There could be a way I don't know about). And although it is being a sheep, I've never had an issue with following a trend I like and I kind of like all the accessories that are available for the ipod. So I put it to y'all... your thoughts?

200 hours

That's my conservative estimate for how many hours I volunteered last year. I'm doing a survey for America's 2nd Harvest and it is one of the questions on the survey. I went through last year's blog entries and added it up. I may be missing some time depending. That's 10% of my working hours. That seems like a lot, but when I was going through blog posts it hardly seemed like any time at all. Especially when you consider how much time I waste doing absolutely nothing at all.

This weekend I have no volunteering planned, but I am planning a Sunday adventure. I may try Seward Park since I've never been. Or I may go to Sand Point Magnusen Park to fly my kite. That one, of course, requires me to consult with the weather forecast to see if there will be a kite flying breeze. This beach park sounds really nice and could be fun. Perhaps Golden Gardens? Maybe the Ballard Locks. What do you think? What looks good? I think I'm going to pack a picnic lunch too.

I hate January!

We only get paid once a month. We get paid before Christmas and won't get paid again until Jan 31. That's 5 and a half weeks. It is too long to wait!

Groovin' on a Sunday afternoon

So far here's what I have accomplished today... Shower. I haven't even done laundry, which is causing a little thought in the back of my head to twitch since I know it needs to happen and the longer I wait the more it twitches because I hate fighting for laundry room time. I was up late last night IMing with a friend who is commiserating with me about the uslessness of boys. We're considering creating our own convent since we both are apparently so repugnant that no man will date us we need to do something. It would be either a convent or become lesbian but I don't know how my esteem could handle it if I couldn't get a member of either sex. (Ok I'm exaggerating. I've always said that I won't meet a guy in a bar because I'm just not that girl. That doesn't really bother me actually.)

I updated my browser to IE 7. (Ok I didn't do it, Microsoft told me to do it and I am at the mercy of the evil empire.) I'm not sure how I feel about it. I have a theory that their phisihing scan is slowing down my browsing and that bugs me.

Another thing that has been bugging me... have y'all noticed these new passive/aggressive wives commercials that are on? I've seen two so far and both make me want to punch the wife. In the first one a woman goes up to her fridge and bangs the glass into a door and it is about new appliances and she says to her husband "The water isn't working. Oh the Ice isn't working. Oh it is because we don't have them." I totally wouldn't buy her a fridge after that. The other is an H&R block commercial and the couple is getting audited and the wife says "we should call our tax guy. Oh we can't because we used a box. Let's ask the box what to do." So dumb.

I finally watched Murderball last night. I've had it from netflix since oh I don't know when but just after New Year's. It was really good. It is about the Paralympic Rugby team. They are crazy! They use special wheelchairs and crash into each other. It is really cool. The movie talks a lot about how the guys ended up in their wheelchairs and their lives. I found it funny and interesting and really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it.

One other thing bothering me... the neighbors let their dogs run up and down the hall and throw the dog toy. During the day it doesn't bother me as much as when they do it in the middle of the night. Although during the day it bugs me because I feel like I'm trapped in my apartment since I don't want to go out there while the dogs are running around (mostly I don't want either of the dogs dashing into my apartment which could just be my neuroses.).

FINALLY... The elevator was broken again on Friday after work and still broken when I went out. Luckily it was working when I got home at 2:00 AM. After walking up the big hills to get home I would've been a significantly unhappy camper if I had to walk up the stairs too.

I give up

Last night, well okay technically this morning, I was all set to write a rambling drunken post about boys and how I really and truly am over lusting after and crushing on the former wc. I fell asleep instead. So unfortunately for you you won't get the drunken maudlin rambling; you'll just get sober maudlin rambling. : ) You also miss out on my musing about whether or not I'm going to hell for using a juice box as a mixer with rum. It is pretty good... Capri Sun Tropical Punch and Mango Rum. Although you should probably use less mango rum than I did because when I got to the bottom of the cup, it was mostly rum.

I know I said it before but thanks to my own delusions and those delusions of my friends I've still managed to convince myself he's interested. But now I'm really done. Last week he was in my office (he still visits daily despite the fact that his office has moved) and we were talking about his band and he had two shows coming up. He said I should go to one. We discussed the relative virtues of the two shows and I said I'd go on Friday. I go. BY MY SELF! So I go and I see him with his band and a bunch of their friends. That's just too much for little ol' me. I can't go up to that entire group. I think that's worse than when men say they don't want to go up to a gaggle of girls. So I position myself in several spots where I think I must be in his line of sight and hang out and drink. The bar had a type of cider in the bottle that I can drink. Finally the 2nd band ended (and they were pretty good) and it was time for his band to go on. They do their show, and they're really good. They were the last band to play. So after they were done I was sitting on a chair in the front and after he broke down all his gear he came over and we talked. For like 5 minutes and then he went to get his car to leave. I helped him load his drum stuff up and he left. What's the point? Honestly.

The other thing I learned... Pioneer Square is freaking FAR from my apartment. It is just over a mile, but going TO the bar was easy since it was all downhill. Coming back from the bar... A whole other story. And it was 1:30 in the morning. It is nice, though, that I can walk home at 1:30 in the morning from a bar and have no problems. :)

Fat asses do not ski.

I'm considering going skiing. I've kind of always wanted to but the expense of all the equipment necessary has really caused me to not do it. So now my friends are going and I'm considering it again but the one thing I think I would have to purchase would be ski pants. I have a good waterproof coat. I have mittens (although I would probably need gloves). I do not have a good hat, but that's not too bad to purchase. (I do have a cute hat but it wouldn't be good for this project. Although somewhere in the recesses of my storage unit I'm fairly certain I would have an ear band made of fleece which would fit the hat bill to keep my ears warm. I also have wicking long johns in that same place all from living in Alaska.) Anyway, I'm trying to find ski pants, but apparently like finding other clothes for fat chicks, this is not easy. We fatties do not ski, which doesn't make sense to me since we've got all this extra padding to keep us warm. I may be able to borrow Big R's since he has out skinnied his other pair.

Don't be a hater

Because I have already done my taxes and will be getting my refund in 8 - 15 business days. YAY!

Affordable?

When I got home last night, there was a flyer in my box for apartment rentals that are affordable and luxurious and given my current apartment dilemma (oh who am I kidding... I always make a big deal out of shit that turns out to be nothing but I digress) I eagerly opened it up. Great... One bedrooms start at $688 and this includes utilities. My current apartment's base rent is $695 plus utilities at $50 and my storage unit that houses empty boxes for my next move at $10. (And with that you know exactly how much rent I pay each month). So this is cool until I realized that this is for lower income folks. According to the flyer you have to make less than $27k annually. Now this seemed kind of high to me. Doing the math and taking out for taxes the person would have less than $1,000 per month to live on for everything else in their lives. That somehow doesn't seem like enough to me.

Unrelated, or related depending... I have been buying these chocolate chip cookies from a health food store in Northgate. They are frozen and all I have to do is bake them. They are DELICIOUS. I LOVE them. I bake 4 at a time and eat two at night and two in my lunch. I just noticed, because clearly I'm an idiot, they are $8.00 a dozen. That's $.66 per cookie! I eat $2.64 per day in cookies alone. It is no wonder I need poor person's housing (for which I don't qualify anyway).

A Wish for a snow day...

When I left for work this morning the snow was falling pretty fast. And sticking. And yet, we are at work today. My biggest boss isn't here. My immediate boss isn't here. The only person with any power that is here is my notboss. And she really doesn't have any power either. The funniest part is that I just received an email that said due to the bad weather, the fac/staff dining room is closed because the people couldn't come to work.

Unfortunately, now that we are all here, it isn't like they are going to let us go home. That sucks.

March!

I don't know why I do the march anymore. The first year all the families were into it, and in fact I only do it because they wanted to. The 2nd year we cancelled (despite the fact that I have a post about doing it. I don't know what's happening there but we cancelled because it was POURING.). The third year I think 3 or 4 girls went. This year I had 1 girl. One girl and that's it. I offered to not have to go and she could just go home, but she wanted to go. So she and I marched and talked. She's a funny little thing. My first year I wasn't sure about her, but now I like her. The march was really short this year. Usually we go downtown and it is long but this time was a short short path. So we were done in like 2 hours... actually probably much less because we started rather late. My girl and I stopped and got hot cocoa at Starbucks which is her favorite part, I think. Last year we did the same thing. It is a nice end when it is so cold outside. I'm not sure if we'll do this again next year. Maybe I'll find something else to do that weekend. :) Ooh maybe I'll have managed to find myself Mr. Right Now and we can do a weekend getaway. ;) (Ok maybe I'm delusional)

I'm taking a multivitamin. This is to help my iron levels. The pills are HUGE. I have to get the iron up so that when I go get my next blood test I am not low iron and my dr will keep giving me my pills. These vitamins have like 150% of iron and 100% of vitamin C. Isa says Vit C is good for iron absorption. Plus, once I hit magic 38 I can donate blood again! Yay! (Blah blah blah critical levels.)

Every year...

Every year the elevator in my building stops working on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I don't know what causes it. Poltergeist I think. I only know this because every year I do the Martin Luther King Jr March and I come home from a long march all tired and then have to climb 4 fucking flights of stairs. This year, apparently the elevator is starting an hour and a half early. I went down to fetch my laundry out of the dryer to discover there was no elevator. Now unlike the last time this happened, I wouldn't have done my laundry if I had known this was going to happen. So I trudged up the 5 flights of stairs all grumpy and tired and shit and thought 'If my apartment building owners think they can raise rents with shit like this happening all the time, they are nuts.'

Which brings me to my 2nd point. I was talking to my apartment manager recently about the possibility of a new lease. I've been leaseless since this guy started. Every time I have asked, I get told that they will want to raise my rent $25 to do it. So I asked again last week sometime and he said the same answer and then mentioned that they (the building owners) want to eventually raise the base rents to $900. Are you fucking kidding me?! If my math is correct, that would be $900 base rent and then an additional $50 for utilities which would be a $200 increase for me. That's a buttload of money and totally not worth it. A neighbor heard that and agreed with me that this building is not worth $900 (or $950)/mo. Now I am willing to pay more in rent, don't get me wrong. I haven't had an increase since I moved in 4 years ago. It would only make sense that I should pay more eventually. But not THAT much more. And considering how often little things like the elevator breaking happen, I also don't know that I could support that much of an increase.

When I was downstairs doing my laundry I discovered one other little needly thing. They've raised our laundry rates by a quarter. It was $1.25 to do each load of wash and the same to dry. Just last Sunday it was still just $1.00. And it isn't as though these machines have been improved at all. They are the same crappy ones that were there last week. I will say it did give me 15 more min of drying time, so I guess that's okay, except I really didn't need the extra 15 min.

Someday I will have the money to buy my own place... although by the time that happens even the distant suburbs will be out of my price range. (Actually I'm hoping the glut of new 'luxury' condos don't work out for all the developers and so they end up going for cheap because everybody and their brother is building one on any 5' of space available. That's probably bad for me karmically but whatever, I never get what I want anyway.)

Such a ditz

I am such a ditz sometimes. I had a meeting to go to today. A meeting I scheduled for the Girl Scouts leaders as their Service Unit Manager. I scheduled it for 10:00 at a library. I was thinking I didn't want to get to the library too early because the library didn't open until 10:00. So last night I was looking up the bus schedule and oh.... I now know how I got confused. Anyway the first time I did a bus search last night I did it to arrive by 10:00 like I needed to. Yet somehow when I was double checking the bus times this morning I looked for a 10:30 arrival time and to further complicate things I looked for a 10:45 arrival time. (Which I will sometimes do so that I can get to a meeting early if I need to set up or whatever.) So as I got to the meeting at 10:45 you can imagine my chagrin as I suddenly realized I was 45 minutes late. Duh, I am so dumb. Luckily nobody but the Girl Scout employee who works with our service unit and one other adult showed up. We were supposed to have a vote. In order to have the vote we had to have a quorum of 13 people. Ha! Like we ever get that many people.

Twice denied

So today I got yet another yellow card from the blood mobile. I got an email that basically said due to the bad weather they are desperate please donate, there's a blood mobile at your employer. (Ok they didn't say "there's a blood mobile at your employer" they said where the blood mobile was and it happens to be my employer.) So I go and eat a hearty lunch and I duck into the bus. And I do all the questions. And I have a good pulse. And I have a good temperature. And I answer all the questions right. And she takes the drop of blood and drops it in the green stuff and it barely drops then floats right to the top. Yup, still anemic. Still yellow carded. I'm at 36% today, though so that's ... well I was going to say good but really it is 1 point higher than last time which was 1 point lower than the time before so that's apparently where I hover.

Then, I logged into blogger to post about this and yay! I've been invited to move Joanne's Life over to the new system. I am excited about this only because I have serious hatred in my heart for the template and I want want want to move to something that will hopefully help me/let me do my own more easily without having to know massive amounts of html. So I click the button... and yet again denied. Apparently Joanne's Life is too fat to move over to the new blogger. They are only letting runway models move and maybe someday if I'm lucky they'll expand to allow those of us bigger chicks to do it. They probably would rather do trannys too. :)

(Ok I'm not actually bitter about it. I still hear about problems, so if I can hold off until everything is perfect I'm not too traumatized.) :)

It didn't make me sad.

I was listening to Adam Corolla this morning on the radio. Danny Bonaduce now is on with him and I loved Jamie & Danny when I lived in LA. I lost my weird love for Danny while watching Breaking Bonaduce because that was just bad. But I do enjoy him as a radio personality and I find Adam Corolla sometimes funny. So this morning I was listening to Adam and Danny and they were discussing who would men rather have sex with... a fat chick or a mtf really hot post- op tranny. Apparently there are a number of men who would rather do the tranny. And they had a bunch of guys calling in to give their opinions. Which is fine but Adam says at some point that he feels really bad for any fat chicks listening and makes a joke about how we're all going to kill ourselves. And all I could think was why would I feel bad about this? Would I want to date a guy who not only would contemplate this question but call in and give his opinion on it? Especially if the opinion was "hot tranny." It did make me chuckle because I was just laying there thinking, 'Thanks, Adam, these guys are giving out their names and locations and you've just helped a bunch of women weed out a few more assholes.'

Weathermen Suck

So allegedly there is going to be this big storm starting at 10:00 tonight. We're going to get snow (and theoretically) things like schools will be closed. So far, no snow. There'd better be snow here in the morning or I'm suing for mental distress.

I went out with Big R tonight. We threw some darts. We had these two guys join us. One was very funny, but older; the other standoffish but young and hot. The old one bit me! It kind of hurt. But it was a fun time and we laughed a lot. They then disappeared and we went upstairs to watch scaryoke. That was not good, but then again is it ever?

There was something else I wanted to talk about but I'm falling asleep on the sofa and want to go to bed.

Talismens

So I'm an atheist, maybe at the closest agnostic but really mostly atheist. Having said that, I will fully admit to having weird little beliefs. They are completely illogical and I'll admit that, but you know they make life fun. Many many years ago I got a daruma doll. I colored one eye, and made my wish. The wish came true and so I colored the other eye. It was a pretty big wish and it came true really quickly. Clearly there are some other forces at work. :)

Michelle's mom gave me this very cool box of stone charms. I googled the meaning of the different stones and discovered that rose quartz is traditionally worn to attract love and heal broken hearts. :) Since then I've been wearing it regularly. I'll let you know if it works. :)

The difference between them & US

I really appreciate that all the tapes and video of Steve Irwin's death have been destroyed or turned over to his wife. That there's not one out there just waiting to be leaked to someone. You know if the investigation had been done here in the states one of them would have 'accidentally' ended up missing and then the highest bidder would've had it and ultimately it would be all over the net. (Yes I do have low expectations for the US media, why do you ask?)

Old friends

One of the cool things about old friends is how you can pick up with them, even years later, and it is almost like the time and space was never there. Spending all those hours with my friend yesterday was almost like we were back in Alaska just chatting and laughing. Her other sons are hellions and it is so funny the stuff they get themselves into.

Mad dash

Firstly, let me tell y'all how much I love cruise control. I never had it on any of the cars I've owned in the past because they were all standards, and well old. (Since I think it can be had on standards now.) So last night I was driving back from Portland (I'll get to that in a moment) and I just set the cruise control to about 3 mph above whatever the posted limit was and called it good. I know that Michelle has done extensive research on gas mileage and cruise control and since I was going up and down a lot of hills I would've been better off without it, but when I first left Portland I discovered that because it was so dark and so quiet and there were not a lot of cars out I would find myself hitting 85 without even realizing it. Also, the Foo Fighters are fun to sing along with at the top of ones lungs totally out of tune. Am I tone deaf because I can hear I'm completely wrong, or are you only tone deaf when you are singing totally wrong and think you sound good? That's an interesting conundrum.

Also, I may honestly hate downtown Portland. I spent 45 minutes lost before I got to where I was going and then I spent another 20 trying to get out. Seriously, they need to do something about the sinage and not have a right turn arrow to get to the 5 freeway right at the exact spot you are supposed to turn right with no warning whatsoever that it is coming. (I'm not at all bitter about that.)

So now why was I in Portland? Let me first say that whenever I think of going to Portland, for some reason I always think it is much farther away than it really is. It is basically a trip to Phoenix for my family and we did that periodically. Maybe because it is a whole other state away. I don't know.... or maybe because when I've gone it has been after work so we've been stuck in I5 traffic until hell froze over. But I've totally digressed.

Michelle IMd me last week asking if I had seen the emails from our friend's mom. And hotmail, being the crappy piece of crap it is, had been sending them to junk so I hadn't seen a one. Apparently our friend (who lives in Juneau) had her next baby and unfortunately he ended up with collapsed lungs and was medevaced shortly after birth to Portland. She followed along a day or two later. So she's been in Portland since Christmas day. Had I known this sooner, I probably could've gone down sooner. So I emailed her mom and asked if it would be okay and then I emailed her directly and offered to come down and hang out. She was agreeable and so on Sunday I rented a car and made a mad dash down there. I stopped along the way for baby presents and even better trashy magazines for her. :) She'd been doing counted cross stitch the whole time she's been there.

The baby is doing so much better. He is still in the NICU which is a little sad, but he only has one more hurdle to go through and he'll be released. He's much better off than all the other babies there. He was full term (and ginormous - 9 lbs 6 ozs - she's little, I don't know how that keeps happening to her). Apparently the doctors think that when he took his first cry he did it with such force he caused a hole in the sac that surrounds the lungs which caused their collapse. Who knew that kind of crazy shit was possible?

There's a little tiny baby on the other side of him who at birth was 1 lb something ozs and only 1 foot long. That's a ruler length. The littler of the two of of my ferrets weighs more than this baby (and is probably longer too). How freaking sad is that? He was the only baby in the area not encased in one of those plastic things. The babies in those plastic things don't even look real. They looked like dolls or something. They never moved or anything. It was very sad.

So the last thing that her baby has to do is learn to eat. He doesn't want to. The first two weeks he was fed through a feeding tube (which is all he has now besides the monitors). She keeps trying to convince him to nurse but he hasn't figured it out yet. He can't leave until he does. So I spent a whole bunch of time with her in the hospital yesterday and I told her if she wants me to come down again just say the word and I'll come to visit. I'm sure it is lonely there for her. She was saying that a lot of the other moms don't come very often and that's sad too. (The 1 lb baby's mama is 13 which is beyond sad.) I was talking to the nurse and she seems to love it, but I honestly couldn't imagine. She does have a rather healthy some things just aren't meant to be kind of attitude which I suppose you need there.

The Family Stone

Have any of y'all watched this movie? I'm going to spoil it for you if you haven't, so you may want to stop reading now....

Ok I warned ya. I watched this tonight on fancy pants cable. I did not like it. I wanted to like it. It seemed like it could be funny or charming or whatever. SJP winning over the family. But once the sister showed up I knew it would go in the direction it went. The way Dermont Mulroney looked at her... You know boyfriend swapping was going to happen. And that was just icky. And I'm not sure if SJP was supposed to be this total bitch, but I mostly felt really bad for her. They were all so mean to her and so unwilling to even think that perhaps she might have good qualities. Although when she started dating the brother suddenly she was okay? I don't get it.

I hurted myself...

I fell down today after work. I stepped wrong and hit the edge of the sidewalk which twisted (the bad ankle yet again) and fell into the mud. Now my new shoe is muddy, the knee of my work pants are muddy and my ego is bruised. (Since about 3 of my girls saw me do it).

We have our camping spot for the year. I'm excited. The girls and I will be going to Cape Disappointment and staying in yurts. The moms and the girls should be happy. We'll go to the Lewis & Clark Interpretative center and we'll get to beach comb and perhaps clam or crab. I've never done either one, and I don't like seafood, but the girls may like it. I'm excited for it actually.

This is the story of 7 people...

who stayed together in a house on New Year's Eve. We were kind of two camps of people... the marrieds and the singles. Isa and Isa's former roommate and I were the singles and married friends of Isa and their married friends were (obviously) the marrieds. We had a good time all in all. I played apples to apples Sunday night for the first time and that game is totally fun. It was a pretty pretty house and I spent a lot of time relaxing, which was nice. I also found the place I'm going to drag my girls for camping. So that's fun! :) There was a small bit of tension. One of the marrieds was unhappy about having to do dishes and that sort of thing. They were a little peeved at the planner of the trip that there wasn't more of an explanation about how meals were going to work, just a vague instruction to bring like one thing that didn't seem to relate to anything, but what are you going to do you know? We all coped and it was definitely something I'd do again.

This is the house in Long Beach. Pretty huh? 3 bedrooms upstairs and 1 downstairs in the garage. That room was freaking arctic and kind of creepy. Isa volunteered to stay down there which is good because I was creeped out just the first time we went down there.

Being the morning person that I am, I was up early each morning. This house was just across the dunes from us and I saw it on my way to the beach. This house almost makes me reconsider my whole hippy working for a non profit way in favor of selling my soul to some corporation. Seriously.

A couple of other houses on the beach on Saturday morning. I included them because I know how Michelle likes pictures of houses. :)

A little sunrise over the ocean shot. The beaches at Long Beach are not supposed to be swum in. Apparently the currents are really bad and you could get sucked out in an instant. I may let the girls wade at least.

Sunrises over the sand dunes. There was a lot of this sea grass. I wonder if we could use it to weave... hmmm....

Pictures middle of the road...

Apparently there's a limit to the amount of pics one can load into blogger so the photos are actually broken up into 3 posts...

Midday Saturday, I went to town with the marrieds. We walked around downtown and I took some pictures. There's a famous 'sea creature' (Jake the Alligator Man, I'm not linking to it because I find it creepy) that I have seen bumper stickers for that actually is housed in Long Beach. And I saw it at Marsh's Free Museum. We went back to the house and I ate and then went back out with the singles. :) We walked down the boardwalk and got ice cream.

This is a giant frying pan. I don't know why they have a giant frying pan in the downtown area, but they do.

Near the giant frying pan are these wood carvings of sea creatures. There were other random wood carvings around the downtown area including a giant Razor Clam and Lewis & Clark statue.

Long Beach claims to have the world's longest beach. We don't know how that could be because like Hawai'i is an island and wouldn't it have a long beach? (Although according to Wikipedia it isn't even close to being the longest beach in the world.)

Whale skeleton. It beached itself at some point in the past and they originally buried it. But some science group encouraged the digging of it up and setting it out. I can't even begin to imagine how gross it must've smelled when they dug it up.

Me in my new jeans. :) In front of a whale statue near the whale skeleton. (oh I'm also wearing my new Danskos because when I was getting my stuff together I was thinking I hate my tennis shoes so I'll just wear these, not thinking about walking on the beach or anything like that. So I have to say these danskos rock the house. They walked on the beach and about 3 weeks ago I waded in shin deep water in them so they are tough as heck.) :)

"Let's go Fly a Kite. Up to the highest height...." I was so excited on Sunday morning. I bought a kite on Saturday night and on Sunday morning I headed out to fly it. All 3 mornings I was the first one up so I had some nice alone time. Saturday and Sunday morning I headed out to the beach early to see what I could see. So this is my kite flying above the ocean.

Here I am so proud of getting it up. There was a person trying to get a sport or stunt kite up near me and they couldn't get it into the sky. That made me laugh a bit. Now that I own a kite, I can take it to the park and fly it there. Yay! I've wanted to take a kite to kite hill (Sand Point Magnussen Park) for awhile now.

Aww poor kite fell on the ground. Isn't it cute though? :)

On Sunday the marrieds stayed at the house while the singles went to visit the light houses. There are two in the area, Cape Disappointment and North Head. We were able to climb up the stairs to North Head and this is from up there looking down at my friend. (In the purple jacket. The dog couldn't come up.)

(The third installment will have some more pics from the light houses and some other stuff.)

Long Beach Pics take 2

Round two of pictures from Long Beach with my usual silly commentaries.

This was up in thetop of Northe Head Lighthouse. The cute little docent was talking about the differences in light houses. While exploring the lighthouses I kept having the song Candle on the Water from Pete's Dragon run through my head. I love that movie and the song.

Me and my coworker and our usual camper friend. This picture points out to me that I should NOT wear this hat in pictures since I think it makes me look like I have a tiny head and a giant body.

The North Head lighthouse up close. I think this looks vaguely phallic. (Ok not vaguely, maybe overtly phallic actually.)

Here I am in front of the North Head Lighthouse. According to what I've read, a lighthouse keeper's wife killed herself by throwing herself off the cliff rocks. That's sad.

I only added this picture in because I thought it was kind of cool. I put my camera up to the lens of one of those binocular machines.

This is the Cape Disappointment lighthouse. Isn't it pretty? We couldn't go up to it though because the path had problems after the storms that occurred earlier this month. From the Lewis & Clark Interprative center you can take a great picture. We also went into and wandered the L & C Interpretive center. It was kind of cool. When I take the girls camping in June, we're going to go there.

Nighttime our last night there. I just liked this picture. The tide was WAY out and there were a ton of people on the beach clamming. I've never done that. I don't eat clams, but I may let the girls try it when we go camping.

I just really liked the apparent rings around the moon. I thought they were cool.